Away from the ashram and the influence of things spiritual, with a few exceptions and continuing to grapple with the ties that bind, the Wanderling moved without understanding into his teenage and post-teenage years connecting the past with the present. Girls, cars, jobs, the draft, military and back to the ashram. Then on to Shangri-la, alternatively known to some as Shambhala. See:

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH WITH THE WANDERLING:

As most of you know, if an email address can be readily scaned by search engines the next thing you know you can't even find the legitimate mail in your box. Hence, the why of how difficult I've made it. Below I offer some suggestions on how to get any number of your questions or concerns along the path answered. However, if you feel a message or personal response would be helpful in your endeavors, e-mail me through the Wanderling link directly below and follow the steps. Be advised your message could be lost in the shuffle or forgotten to death using the above method anyway as there are a number of SPAM FILTERS IN PLACE that block just about everything --- BUT, and this is the secret, if you type AWAKENING 101 --- in capital letters with a space between AWAKENING and 101 --- in the subject line of your email it has a much better chance of being sorted out of the tons of unsolicited material and actually be read rather than being blocked or deleted:

Also please be advised that I do not, that is DO NOT have any Facebook pages directly attributable back to me in any way, shape or fashion. Any Facebook page implying they are ME or MINE in some manner are done so by others on their own accord and without my sanction. Any poster thereof thinking I will read or respond to posts by anyone are mistaken. I don't go to the pages, I don't read the posts nor do I have any access to respond. Any responses to any posts have not been done by me.

"The monastery itself was a cold, stark environment high in the mountains above the tree line, far removed from the western world and civilization, operating beyond the bounds of time, whose lineage, rituals, and beliefs hearkened straight back unbroken and unfettered to the likes of Hui Neng, Bodhidharma and the Buddha. Doing so enabled me to be guided, via the master's skillful means, through to the full level of the unveiled truth, springing unhindered and unencumbered from it's original grounding source. Returning to America I have, because of that experience, through comparison and similes, been able to cut through and discard the trappings overlayed over the centuries, stripping bare to the undiluted core."

"Real Masters never charge for their services, nor do
they accept payment in any form nor in any sort of material
benefits for their instructions. This is a universal
law among Masters, and yet amazingly, it is a fact that
thousands of eager seekers in America and elsewhere, go
on paying large amounts of money for "spiritual instruction." Masters are always self-sustaining and are never supported by their students or by public charity."

On occasion people DO email me about Enlightenment, the Awakening process and any results thereof. Matter of fact, they do it all the time and on a regular basis. For some of the most interesting go to:

If you would like information regarding a given Zen or Buddhist related subject, term, word, guru, teacher or Ancient Venerable or anything else you can think of, enter that or any name, word or term in the numerous variety of search engines that permeate the web such as Google along with the word Wanderling and see what comes up.

Seekers along the path and others so interested can do the same type searches in other areas as well, most of which when related to me, eventually lead back to Zen, Buddhism, and Enlightenment. As a young boy I was fascinated with flying things such as Zeppelins and underwater things such as U-boats and submarines, all for given reasons that are explained along the way --- and of which again, lead back to Zen, Buddhism, and Enlightenment --- sometimes even to the mysterious hermitage said to exist somewhere beyond time in a remote area of the Himalayas known under a variety of names such as Gyanganj, Shambhala or Shangri-La:

"From a young boy wandering from foster home to foster home with nothing of any real personal value to myself other than a Captain Midnight decoder, to being drafted into the military and having hours and hours of training, like an arrow shot straight and true to the very center of it's target, my life's trajectory placing me in the hands of a non-English speaking Buddhist monk, all within striking distance of the mighty Himalayas and unknowingly, the secret hermitage of Shambhala."

Growing up I loved Leonardo Da Vinci, Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies, especially Tarzan and the Huntress, Warner Brothers cartoons, astronomy, the cosmos, rockets to the Moon and Mars, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, along with a myriad superheroes, especially the 'mortal' type such as the Spirit and Captain Midnight. So too, as a young boy, aligning myself as close as I could with the precepts found in the Cowboy Code of the West, high on my list were western comic book heroes and cowboy movie stars such as Firehair, the Durango Kid, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, their horses such as Champion and Trigger, and cowboy sidekicks such as Smiley Burnette, Gabby Hayes, and Andy Devine.(see)

If in using the searches above as suggested and what you seek is not forthcoming in the fashion you desire, OR if you simply wish to email or contact me, again, please feel free to do so. Remember, in your quest, and for life in general, if the intent of your actions carries within it the RIGHT escort, any downstream outcomes from such endeavors will in their context, deliver the strength of favorable impulses as they unfold.

People often comment about my continued championing of Zen, Enlightenment, and Buddhism. As it was put in an email so blithely one day, me blathering on-and-on ad infinitum about my Mentor, so alluded to in the above quote, as though he was some sort of major Dharma-mover, but who in the end, like me they say, having no real of formal direct-lineage or training. In the end I sort of like what Hui-k'o, the Second Patriarch of Zen has to say:

"Hui-k'o, the Second Patriarch of Zen passed on the bowl and robe to his successor, the Third Patriarch, Seng-ts'an, signifying the Transmission of the Dharma. Hui-k'o, who had received the seal of approval from Bodhidharma himself, then went everywhere drinking and carousing around like a wildman and partaking in the offerings of the brothel districts. When people asked how he could do such a thing, being a Patriarch of the Zen school and all, he would respond with: 'What business is it of yours?'"

What business is it of yours? Indeed. They ignore, discount, or don't give any credence to either myself or my mentor and our experiences in the normal flow of things under the auspices of the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi or mine specifically, directly related through my mentor to Yasutani Hakuum Roshi, Alfred Pulyan and the like.

So too, even if a short shrift would ensue for some regarding my study-practice at the Mahasi Meditation Center in Rangoon, Burma, mentioned further below, how can it be ignored me having spent a good portion of what has happened in my life Doing Hard Time In A Zen Monastery under a Zen master in a monastery completely free of western influences located high along the southern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau hearkening straight back to the First Patriarch of Zen, Bodhidharma and the Sixth Patriarch Hui Neng as so described and so presented in the opening quote a the very top of the page.

In Doing Hard Time In A Zen Monastery, linked above, I write that after becoming fully immersed in the monastery culture and goings-on I began going into the village some distance down and below the monastery with a few of the monks on occasion. On one of those excursions a man in the village who had a rudimentary use of English tried to tell me something I wasn't getting the full grasp of. He signed me to wait while he went to get something, returning with a well worn magazine, possibly German or Dutch, and pointed to pictures of the women in the advertisements. What he was trying to say, showing his hands with his fingers up and counting, that 10 to 15 --- what I determined to be months before --- a western woman had come to the village. When I asked what happened to her he pointed toward the mountains. At the time I didn't quite know what to make of it and for the most part quickly forgot it --- until one day what he was trying to tell me bared fruit and high in the mountains I met a western woman traveling alone by the name of Hope Savage. Back in the village on a second occasion he tried to tell me something again, only this time more of a warning, and of which in that it wasn't clear I didn't take heed at the level I should have.

On that that second occasion, a morning super early, after a long trek to the village and back on my own, found me having just crouched down in the fields some distance outside the walls of the monastery doing my business before returning. In the process of doing so I felt the shadows of three men fall across my face. Evidently what the man in the village had been trying to tell me was that three men had been snooping around the village for a day or two seemingly looking for me. After I left they either got up or were woke up, then either heard or were told the white monk was in town. Learning I was gone they apparently followed along the trail in my wake in an effort to catch me before I entered the monastery and be beyond their reach. If I would have figured out beforehand three men were in the village, especially two from the west, I may have been suspicious enough to have looked them over first. Or, even without me knowing, had I not stopped in the fields outside the monastery I may have had sufficient distance and time between me and them to have made it through the doors unhindered. Instead neither happened and I fell within their grasp, being abducted by the three, all of which were military irregulars. That night, well down the trail after an all day travel from the village, under the cover of darkness several Buddhist monks stealthly spirited me away from the irregulars. Hours later, after stopping a couple times that second day with the monks begging food and sharing with the soldiers and myself during the stops, we pulled into a large area full of buildings and structures and got out. The monks were met by a few other monks, the truck with the two soldiers drove away, and I was escorted into a building apparently to sleep.

The next morning I was met by a man, a monk, that spoke English who told me I was at the Mahasi Meditation Center in Rangoon and brought there for, among other things, my safe keeping and overall well being. By the end of the day, over a period of several hours, I met with the Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw, the center's meditation master and Principal Preceptor. Through others it was explained that I was welcome to stay as long as I liked. The whole thing, well intentioned as it was, possibly even as an effort to detox me back to normalcy after my time in the monastery, was short lived. Within several weeks or so, after having entered their meditation sessions --- but most assuredly before I could turn around and really start making sense of things --- a couple of Burmese government suit-types arrived looking for me (nothing gets by the authorities). I told them I was not complacent in any of the endeavors that brought me to the center and it was, from start to finish, all done so without any previous knowledge or instigation on my part. Everybody in the pipeline seemed to agree and following an up-and-down the pipeline mutual agreement, without getting into too many of the logistics, I was soon back to my original starting point and back to the states as though nothing had happened.

HOW I RETURNED TO THE MONASTERY

Most people who have read through all that I have presented, with the thousands of interlinking footnotes and all, have had enough. However, every once in awhile there are those who come forward interested in the jump between the two paragraph quote below and how it was closed. That is to say, how did I, as an adult at the Ramana ashram return to the monastery. We know I ended up in Tiruvannamalai in some fashion with the help of the woman on the farm because I met the young boy with the Code-O-Graph there, yet no where does it show up how it was I ended up back at the monastery. It is clear that I did because in Doing Hard Time In A Zen Monastery I write that I was abducted by military irregulars outside the walls one morning and taken back to civilization

After exchanging photos with the young anglo boy I met that day in the ashram he returned with, not leading, but instead being yanked, dragged or pulled by one arm and his wrist across the ashram grounds, twisting on his knees while dragging the tops of his feet and toes trailing behind him in the dirt, by a nearly wild-eyed white woman who was basically running in my direction pointing a bony-like finger toward me while holding the decoder in that same hand and turning back to look at a white man some distance behind hurriedly trying to catch up --- two individuals I was sure I didn't want to meet or talk to at the time.

"I scooted as quickly as I could across what was left of the ashram grounds between me and the gate and out onto the street, melding into the small milieu of what counted as crowds in those days, disappearing.

"Years passed and one day a friend of mine helping me go through a few things ran across my rather loose knit so-called collection of decoders that were sort of doing not much more than just floating around in an unconnected fashion in a drawer."

The above sentences as found in the above quote are the two closing sentences at the end of Doing Hard Time In A Zen Monastery. Although the physical visual-space that separates them is small, the gap between the two as related to the passage of time within the context of the sentences is huge. One moment, when all the trials and tribulations that have been laid out from childhood through to the Army, the monastery, the Himalayas, et al have ended, I walk away from the ashram, suddenly jumping to many years later, apparently comfortably safe back at home in the United States as though nothing ever happened --- simply hanging with a friend sorting through a bunch of decades-old Captain Midnight decoders.

Lets just say, in more ways than one, it involved war torn Burma, the Japanese invasion of India, the crash of a C-47 high in the rarefied air in the Tibetan area of the Himalayas after being lost on a flight from Calcutta, and a U.S. Army Captain who had flown over the "hump" from China, visiting the Ramana ashram at the same time I was there.

The Mahasi Meditation Center, located in what was once called Rangoon, Burma, but now called Yangon, Myanmar, was founded in 1949 by a group of highly involved Buddhist adepts, including the Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw Agga Maha Pandita, whose sole interest was in expanding the knowlege and use of the same meditation method developed, used, and taught by the Buddha. So said, the center is a massive twenty acre compound set aside and designed exclusively for the participating in and the learning of Vipassana Meditation. Those who seek admission to the center undergo full-time Vipassana meditation for about six to twelve weeks which is considered an appropriate period of retreat for one to gain a basic knowledge and experience of Vipassana meditation.

Amazingly enough, for those who may be so interested, for foreign meditators, the entire period of their stay for study-practice at the center --- six to twelve weeks --- is FREE, including both full boarding and lodging.

COMPLETING THE MEDITATION CENTER'S THE FULL 12 WEEKS:

Again, for those who say I have no real of formal direct-lineage or training and, although above I mention that I was unable to reach completion of the full 12 week meditation regimen as offered by the center, that mention of same refers to that particular time and event. Thirty years plus later, after having volunteered with the American Red Cross and being deployed for weeks-and-weeks and working four hurricanes (Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike) I made it a point to return to the center. In-turn, from the beginning, re-participating in and completing all 12 weeks of the sessions. I did so primarily because I wanted a distinct separation --- and return to the quietude of the center mixed with the milieu of the Asian atmosphere --- without concern by or for others with my support system. For almost anything you would ever want to know regarding staying at the Mahasi Meditation Center, etc., please refer to the center's frequently asked questions section by clicking HERE and HERE.

A few days before I was to complete my 12 weeks, and for all practical purposes, on a countdown in hours to depart, one of the monks, in a highly unusual set of circumstances, came to me and said an American woman had arrived at the office requesting to see me. In that only a very small cadre of people actually knew where I was and what I was doing, thinking someone seeking me must have some importance behind it, I agreed to go back with the monk. When I got to the administrative area the woman was gone, leaving only a $100 dollar Desert Inn poker chip to be given to me. The poker chip led straight to Chiang Mai and the jungles of Thailand. See:

There are those who come forward on occasion taking issue as to what I have cited as Doing Hard Time In A Zen monastery, a monastery they take as being in Tibet --- with Zen and Tibet in their view not necessarily going hand-in-hand.

The monastery of which I speak is one of the ones operating independent of time. Such entities are beyond both time and place. Others aren't. If you have read of the exploits of the Buddhist monk Hui Shen, said to have traveled to what is now called North and Central America, but known in 500 AD as Fu Sang at the time of Hui Shen's travels, you will see he was, although a Buddhist monk, born somewhere within the landlocked area adjacent to China which now days would be considered Afghanistan. Borders, countries, religions, and present day deep-set cultures as they exist today have not always done so. What may seem out of place now, may not have been in the old days.

On the ancient Silk Road, of which I have made reference to in a number of places in my works, AKA The Tea-Horse Trade Route
the Tea Horse Trail or Road and more formally the Chamadao, and of which regardless of what it is called, all being integral parts of the Silk Road, there is a place known as Dunhuang in northwestern China on the edge of the Gobi Desert. Sixteen miles southeast of Dunhuang is the Mogao Caves, a complex of some 700 or so caves dating back to 400 AD, perhaps before, carved out of the living rock above the Dachuan River. One after the other of the caves are adorned with Buddhist statuary and art, among them one cave specifically noted for having a hoard of manuscripts known as the Dunhuang Manuscripts discovered hidden and sealed away for well over a thousand years. The following is what Wiki writes on the manuscripts:

"By far the largest proportion of manuscripts from the Dunhuang cave contain Buddhist texts. These include Buddhist sutras, commentaries and treatises, often copied for the purpose of generating religious merit. Several hundred manuscripts have been identified as notes taken by students, including the popular Buddhist narratives known as bian wen. Much of the scholarship on the Chinese Buddhist manuscripts has been on the Ch'an (or Zen) texts, which have revolutionized the history of Ch'an Buddhism."

There is a book titled TIBETAN ZEN: Discovering a Lost Tradition (2015) by Sam van Schaik based on his study of rare Tibetan manuscripts discovered among the hoard of manuscripts found in the aforementioned sealed cave. Taken together van Schaik's works offer a heretofore unknown window into the existence of a Tibetan Zen tradition that has not been known previously to scholars and laypeople alike, whether Tibetan, European, or Chinese. See:

"My uncle (i.e., the Wanderling's uncle in the original text) told me the first time he ever saw me I was basically not much more than a walk-around one or two year old toddler. According to how he remembered it he came by the house one day to see my mother and father while on a trip through Southern California. After that, nearly six years went by before we were to cross paths again."

Right around that six years later time when my uncle and I crossed paths again a movie version of The Yearling was released. Years before, when my uncle first saw me as a walk-around toddler, my mother was reading The Yearling as it was just published. At that time he called me a "Yearling." When we met again the movie just came out, and he was reminded of what he called me as a toddler. By then, of course, my mother was long gone, my father had married my Stepmother and I was no longer remotely close to being anything that resembled a Yearling. Knowing I had been to India and returned in a somewhat can't quite put your finger on it altered state where I seemed to "wander" in and out, my uncle, in an interesting twist of fate, began calling me "the Wanderling" --- a sort of play on the words of the term "the Yearling."

In later years the person that would become my spiritual Mentor in things Zen and who had studied under Sri Ramana, came across me and heard that my uncle had called me a "wanderling," he immediately took to it --- primarily because of a very important aspect regarding the historical background of Ramana's life as presented in the following quote from Ramana's biography. FYI, Venkataraman, so mentioned in the quote below, was the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi's given name:

"There was a curse on Venkataraman's family - in truth, it was a blessing - that one out of every generation should turn out to be a mendicant. This curse was administered by a wanderling, an ascetic who, it is said, begged alms at the house of one of Venkataraman's forbears, and was refused. A paternal uncle of Sundaram Aiyar's became a sannyasin; so did Sundaram Aiyar's elder brother. Now, it was the turn of Venkataraman, although no one could have foreseen that the curse would work out in this manner."(source)

Extraterrestrials, ray guns, UFOs, curmudgeon old desert-southwest types...the following quote comes from the source so cited:

"I have read quite a bit of The Wanderling's writings and found it very intriguing. Much of what he has to say about Zen and Buddhism was helpful, but at the sametime I was skeptical about his apparent fascination with esoteric, 'new age' type topics like Carlos Castaneda, shamanism, UFOs, etc."

Often people who read my stuff have a tendency to run it all together, when in reality there was a big difference from that of my childhood being raised under the auspices of my uncle and when the person I call my mentor took over during my high school years and afterwards. In that high school, post-high school, pre-draft period was a growing and continued deepening and upwelling of a certain embryo-like spiritual insight, particularly as it related to Zen. It was all forced to a head as the time shortened just prior to my involuntarily imposed departure for the military.

At the start of my junior year of high school a highly unusual man moved into the house next door, a man who would eventually become my Mentor in things spiritual. The first time I saw him I was set aback by the calm serenity he seemed to abide in. Over time he revealed he had studied under the venerated Indian holy man the Baghavan Sri Ramana Maharshi at his ashram in Tiruvannamalai, South India between the wars. As the years passed and I got to know him I began asking him then nearly begging him to "make me like him." Time after time he brushed me off.

Finally, I guess, thinking he would never get rid of me he began making a few suggestions. He began gently coaching me through the finer subtleties of deeper and deeper meditation; he urged me to read a whole raft of Zen related books; and eventually it was he who sent me to do "real" study under a Japanese Zen master.

He came to me one day and told me he would be leaving soon and I would be on my own. The pressure of the multitudes were crunching down on him and he sought a more solitary lifestyle. Prior to his departure he told me that a highly honored Japanese Zen master by the name of Yasutani Hakuun Roshi was visiting the United States for a short time and since what I seemed to be seeking and what Zen is paralleled, suggested I see him. He had taken it upon himself to make the arrangements for me to attend a special week long sesshin under the master, re the following:

"The sesshins ran from four in the morning to eight at night. About thirty people attended and we sat in two rows of fifteen facing one another across the room with our backs toward the wall.

"By the final day our numbers had diminished greatly and though the master spoke in private with the others, he refused to have private consultation with me. When the last day finally ended and we were leaving, thanking heavens we even survived, the interpreter came to me and said the master wished to speak with me. The master told me three of the our group had realized Kensho and berated me for not being among them. He said I had vast opportunities in my daily existence far beyond most and had not fulfilled the expectations of either him or my mentor. I thanked him, bowed, and left."

It should be brought to the attention of the reader that my attempts at study-practice under Yasutani turned out less than successful, eventually in the process returning then to my mentor a few years later, post-military, with much more positive results.

As for the battle, during the early morning hours of February 25, 1942 the whole city of Los Angeles and surrounding communities were in an uproar as thousands of rounds of anti-aircraft shells were expended in an attempt to pull down whatever it was in the sky that night. The slow moving object, said to be as big or bigger than a Zeppelin, was caught in the glare of the searchlights from Santa Monica to Long Beach and seemed impervious to the constant barrage of shells. It eventually disappeared out over the Pacific after cruising along the coast and cutting inland for a while. The huge object was never clearly explained and was basically hushed up without response from the authorities.

The Buddha said "If a monk should frame a wish as follows: 'Let me travel through the air like a winged bird,' then must he be perfect in the precepts (Sila), bring his thoughts to a state of quiescence (Samadhi), practice diligently the trances (Jhana), attain to insight (Prajna) and be frequenter to lonely places."